Apocalypse: The Beginning of the End

Chapter V: Families Reduce To Ashes

Apollo Drakos

The first thing I felt after launching was a sudden upward force. The acceleration of the ship was greater than you could imagine. This pressure can literally kill you. But I forced myself to stay awake. This was the worst sensation I had ever felt. My body almost gave up, when the ship stopped accelerating. I looked behind. Phoenix had collapsed, but Melissa was awake, though she looked pale. And she was crying.

Nothing made sense. Three kids with one month of training had survived the acceleration of a spaceship. Well, I was sure Phoenix was alive because he was breathing very loudly. He seemed fine, even though he seemed to be. But when Melissa was crying, it was as unusual as us surviving the launching.

But I could not pay attention to her, because I had to wait till the side rockets were detached, and that would happen soon. In the meanwhile, to get into the orbit as quickly as possible, I turned the ship.

It was an enormous ship. The control panel, which was the whole area in which we could go, was itself, very huge. It adjusted itself depending on the tilt of the ship. When it was standing on Earth, everything in the ship was straight with respect to Earth. Now, however, it was tilting so that the front was the nose. It was an amazing feature, though I knew an outsider would not be able to tell the difference about the tilt, because it would look exactly the same on the outside whether it was on the Earth or in space.

Suddenly, I felt weightless. I looked around and everything was floating around. We had left the Earth's atmosphere. There had to be some sort of an anti-gravity button type thing. I found it on the cockpit where I controlled the ship, and I pressed it. Everything fell, including us.

"Nice bump," muttered Phoenix and started snoring again.

Melissa did not seem to find this funny. On the contrary, she was still crying. I heard her slap him really hard.

"Ow," he muttered, woke up, and then went to sleep.

Meanwhile, we entered the Earth's orbit. The side rockets and the lowest part of the ship had run out of fuel. I ejected them, and turned on the fuel for the next fuel tank, to get to the Moon safely. This thruster was weaker than the previous one, but that was perfect. We began going faster around the Earth.

Meanwhile, Melissa gave up on Phoenix. She came to me.

"I want to talk to you," she said.

"Yeah?" I asked. "What is it?"

I hadn't meant to be rude, but she slapped me hard too. I rubbed my cheek.

"Sorry," I said. "What did you want to say?"

She glared at me. Her eyes sometimes scared me more than anything else.

"Sorry," I muttered, so that only I could hear it.

It looked like she was about to murder me when she said, "All right, I'll tell you."

I waited. She did not say anything.

"What?" I asked, confused. I didn't get it.

"It's.... hard to frame it," she said. "I'm just not that sure whether my parents are okay."

I was about to answer when I understood what she meant. Yesterday, Melissa had thought she would be returning after the sleepover. She never even got to say goodbye, and now no one had a clue about them. What if the safe house they were in was also gone, like the one we had seen?

"But Dad said they're safe," I said.

"They might be," she said. "For now. What about later?"

"They're going to be fine," I said. "Look, your parents raised someone tough. And if you can survive this, so can they. And you will survive this."